Which South Korean sci-fi mystery thriller television series on Netflix is set on a near-future Earth suffering from extreme desertification, as a specialized team embarks on a perilous mission to the Moon to retrieve a mysterious sample from an abandoned research facility?

The South Korean sci-fi mystery thriller television series described is indeed "The Silent Sea (Review)." This engaging Netflix series plunges viewers into a desperate near-future Earth, ravaged by extreme desertification, where water has become a severely rationed commodity. To combat this dire crisis, humanity turns its gaze to the stars, specifically to the Moon, as a specialized team is dispatched on a high-stakes, perilous mission. Their objective is to retrieve a mysterious sample from the abandoned Balhae Lunar Research Station, a facility shrouded in secrecy where a catastrophic incident occurred five years prior, resulting in the deaths of all 117 personnel.

The eight-episode series, released in December 2021, intricately weaves together science fiction, thriller, and mystery elements. The title itself, "The Silent Sea," is a reference to the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon, a dark basaltic plain that early astronomers mistakenly believed to be a body of water. The mysterious sample the crew seeks turns out to be "lunar water," a substance with unique and dangerous properties: it multiplies aggressively upon contact with living biological material and causes organisms, including humans, to drown from the inside. The show's premise, while fictional, draws a fascinating parallel to real-world scientific discoveries, as NASA confirmed the presence of watery ice in the Moon's polar regions in 2018, adding a layer of speculative realism to the narrative. The series stars Bae Doona as astrobiologist Song Ji-An, who is driven by a personal quest to uncover the truth behind her sister's death at the ill-fated Balhae Station.